I first encountered Man the Hunted co-author Donna Hart more
than 20 years ago, while investigating the U.S./Canada transborder
traffic in exotic cats, as a reporter for the Sherbrooke Record. I
had already seen and photographed the cats, on the premises of a
small private hunting preserve that would now be called a “canned
hunt.”
With the help of Montreal activist Anne Streeter, and local
sources who chose to be anonymous, I had traced the substantial
criminal history of some of the people who were involved. I had
interviewed the bad guys. Now I needed an informed pro-animal source
to comment on the veracity of what I had been told about where the
big cats came from, how they were bred, how they were kept, and
what would become of them.
Animal rights and humane organizations, at the time, mostly
had little institutional knowledge of exotic cats and “canned hunts.”
But three different people mentioned that I should talk to
Donna Hart, if I could find her.

HOUSTON, BUCHAREST, SAN DIEGO– Insisting in 1996 that the
current Houston SPCA shelter be built to withstand a Category 4
hurricane, longtime executive director Patty Mercer was accused of
alleged extravagance–but Mercer had seen in 1992 the damage done to
shelters in southern Florida by Hurricane Andrew.
Mercer looks like a seer today. The Houston SPCA, already
handling more than 35,000 animals per year, took in 270 animals from
the Louisiana SPCA and much of the Louisiana SPCA staff just ahead of
Hurricane Katrina, and continued to house most Louisiana SPCA
activities for weeks afterward, after Katrina wrecked the Louisiana
SPCA shelter and inundated most of New Orleans for a month.
More than a million Houstonians evacuated ahead of Hurricane
Rita, but the Houston SPCA didn’t. Animals were trucked to shelters
farther away, so that the Houston SPCA could accommodate evacuees
from elsewhere–like 57 dogs and 28 cats who arrived the evening of
September 25 from the Humane Society of Southeast Texas in Beaumont.
In Romania, Asociatia Natura cofounder Carmen Milobendzchi
showed similar foresight. An architect by trade, Milobendzchi opted
to build slowly, as funding became available, rather than take
chances, cut corners, and get the job “done” only to have to
rebuild after one disaster.

Jan Moor-Jankowski, 81, died on August 27, 2005 in New
York City after a brief illness. Born in Poland, Moor-Jankowski
joined the Polish Army at age 15 to help fight the 1939 Nazi
invasion, then fought in the resistance. “Moor-Jankow-ski’s
underground exploits included impersonating a German officer in an
elaborate scheme to forge travel documents,” recalled Douglas Martin
of The New York Times. “After an explosive bullet burst in his knee,
he was shifted from hospital to hospital, speaking German even under
anesthesia. The last of his 27 escapes from German and Soviet
prisons was into Switzerland. He earned his medical degree there,
partly by writing his thesis on the leg brace he invented for
himself.” As a blood researcher, Martin added, “Moor-Jankowski
experimented on himself, but refused an offer to do medical tests on
American prisoners. He started working with apes,” eventually
developing ethical qualms about that, too. Moor-Jankowski emigrated
to the U.S. in 1963 to found the New York Primate Center at New York
University. In 1965 Moor-Jankowski formed the Laboratory for
Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates, LEMSIP for short,
which for the next 30 years was widely seen as the standard setter in
humane treatment of laboratory primates. “He was dismissed by NYU on
August 9, 1995,” Martin summarized, “the day after the USDA told
the university that he had reported violations” of the Animal Welfare
Act at another of its labs. ANIMAL PEOPLE reported the firing on
page one. Moor-Jankowski ensured before leaving that all of the
LEMSIP primates were retired to the Primarily Primates and Wildlife
Waystation sanctuaries. Moor-Jankowski may be best remembered,
however, for spending $2 million of his own money in a successful
defense against a libel suit brought against him in his capacity as
founding editor of the International Journal of Primatology.

An inadvertent release of dolphins from the Marine Life
Oceanarium in Gulfport, Mississippi ended on September 20 when a
capture team led by former Free Willy/Keiko Foundation trainer Jeff
Foster retrieved the last escapees from the Mississippi Sound.
“Before Katrina hit the coast on August 29,” explained
Valerie Bauman of Associated Press, “the dolphins were moved to a
pool at the Marine Life Oceanarium that had withstood the destruction
of Hurricane Camille in 1969. Katrina destroyed that pool and pulled
the dolphins out into the Gulf of Mexico. Biologists located the
dolphins on September 10 by performing aerial surveys. They were
monitored and fed from boats, and four were rescued within days,
but the other four had left the area.”
Marine Life Aquarium owner Moby Solangi said three of the
eight dolphins “were born at the facility, and had never been wild.”
“So far, none of the media have investigated Solangi’s
background,” complained longtime dolphin freedom advocate Ric
O’Barry, who now works for One Voice, of France. O’Barry took
time out from organizing an October 8 day of international protest
against coastal dolphin massacres and captures for the exhibition
industry to elaborate.

The first widely publicized post-Katrina animal rescue was
managed as a Labor Day photo op for Sahara star Matthew McConaughey.
McConaughey helped to evacuate anesthesiologist James
Riopell, 50 dogs, 18 cats, and two hamsters from the roof of the
Lindy Boggs Medical Center in Slidell, Louisiana, isolated for a
week by high water.
“A day before McConaughey’s mercy mission,” a press release
recounted, “another helicopter trying to rescue the animals and
their guardian crashed outside the hospital.”
While awaiting rescue, “The doctor euthanized some animals
at the request of their owners, who feared they would be abandoned
and starve. He made a small gas chamber out of a plastic-wrapped dog
kennel,” wrote Mike Stobbe of Associated Press.
“The bigger dogs were fighting it. When I saw that, I said
‘I can’t do it,'” said Lorne Bennett. His wife Valerie Bennett had
offered boat rescuers her wedding ring and her mother’s wedding ring
to save their four dogs, Stobbe reported. They were eventually
among the saved.

Katrina closed 11 of the 14 Mississippi chicken
slaughterhouses, according to the National Chicken Council, briefly
cutting U.S. poultry killing by as much as 10%. Tornadoes driven
ahead of Katrina destroyed at least 17 “growout houses” in Georgia,
killing more than 250,000 chickens and one chicken farmer.
The Farm Sanctuary refuge at Watkins Glen, New York, on
September 14 accepted 725 chickens “saved from a farm ravaged by
Hurricane Katrina in rural Mississippi,” according to a Farm
Sanctuary press release. The chickens had been left to die or be
bulldozed into mass graves.”
“We saw a massive open grave containing thousands of dead
chickens crawling with maggots,” elaborated volunteer Kate Walker.
“Shockingly, 21 were still alive, huddled in the corner of the pit.”
“The property included five warehouse-type sheds, each
confining tens of thousands of birds,” added Animal Place founder
Kim Sturla, who was on the scene with personnel from the Black
Beauty Ranch sanctuary in Texas.
“The producer, who raises broiler chickens for Tyson Foods,
collected 15,000 birds from the damaged sheds and relocated them into
the already overcrowded remaining two sheds,” Sturla said. “He felt
it would be inhumane to cram more birds into the remaining sheds,
and allowed us to save as many as we could before they died.”
That was the only mass rescue of poultry reported to ANIMAL PEOPLE.

“As rising floodwaters swamped New Orleans, Louisiana’s chief
epidemiologist enlisted state police on a mission to break into a
high-security government lab and destroy any dangerous germs before
they could escape or fall into the wrong hands,” Paul Elias and
Alicia Chang of Associated Press reported.
“Armed with bolt cutters and bleach, Dr. Raoult Ratard’s
team entered the state’s so-called hot lab, and killed all the
living samples.” Elias and Chang revealed no details about the
species identity of the “living samples” at that lab, but noted that
“Louisiana State University lost 8,000 lab animals, including mice,
rats, dogs and monkeys. Many drowned. Others died without food and
water, and the rest were euthanized,” according to LSU Health
Sciences Center School of Medicine dean Larry Hollier.
Researcher Paul K. Whelton, M.D. confirmed the deaths in an
interview with Laurie Barclay of Medscape.
But some animals were apparently missed. Rescuers recovered “a
couple of chinchillas and 16 dogs” from the LSU medical center, said
Matthew Davis of the BBC.

The City of Los Angeles in 1974 took over the operation of a
low-cost sterilization clinic opened a year earlier by Mercy Crusade,
and started the first city-subsidized sterilization program in the
U.S.
Working for that clinic, Marvin Mackie, DVM, developed
high-volume sterilization. Teaching his methods to others, Mackey
eventually founded a string of low-cost, high-volume sterilization
clinics, emulated by many others, including Jeff Young of Planned
Pethood Plus in Denver, and Mary Herro, now retired, who started
the Animal Foundation of Nevada in Las Vegas.
When Mackie started in veterinary practice, under 10% of all
pet dogs in the U.S. and under 1% of pet cats had been sterilized.
Today more than two-thirds of all pet dogs and upward of 80% of all
pet cats are sterilized, mostly by vets using the Mackie methods.
With practice, Mackie method vets routinely sterilize from
30 to 50 dogs and cats per day–and their productivity commands
salaries of upward of $100,000 a year.

GONZALES, La.; TYLERTOWN, Miss.; HOUSTON–With Internet
“bloggers” and mass media providing almost minute-to-minute updates
on the Hurricane Katrina and Rita animal evacuations through the peak
of the crisis, ANIMAL PEOPLE soon realized that our major roles
would be rumor control (see page 3) and helping donors effectively
direct their contributions.
From August 27, 2005 to our October 2005 edition press date,
ANIMAL PEOPLE documented the helping efforts of more than 190 humane
organizations involved in the Katrina/Rita rescues and evacuations,
acknowledged in the following pages, beginning with brief profiles
of some of those that were most prominent.
The first mention of each organization will be in boldface,
to allow readers to quickly identify their roles. Many organizations
did much more than page space and time available have allowed us to
describe, and would be worthy of profiles, opportunity permitting.
We hope to have hit the highlights, with apologies in advance to
those who may feel overlooked or neglected.
ANIMAL PEOPLE received e-mails, calls, and news clippings
mentioning the plans of hundreds of other organizations, whose
accomplishments are not yet verified–partly because many became too
busy, often in places without working telephones, to maintain
contact.

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